Three journalists (well, two journalists and a full-time blogger) took a
look at my new article, What’s New About the New Normal: The Evolving
Market for New Lawyers in the 21st Century, described in my last post. Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal provided
a fair and balanced summary of the paper’s content, but concentrated on
the aspects of the analysis predicting that the number of entry-level
Law Jobs will remain depressed for the foreseeable future. Jacob
Gershman of the Wall Street Journal provided
an equally fair and balanced summary, but focused on the paper’s
additional and somewhat counterintuitive conclusion that, because poor
job prospects are driving down the number of new law students, there
will eventually be fewer law graduates seeking more or less the same
number of jobs, which should make life somewhat easier for the fewer
graduates on the job market some years from now. Elie Mystal of Above the Law
treated us to one of his breathless,
spittle-on-the-corners-of-his-mouth rants, and pronounced me a
Don’t-Worry-Be-Happy academic apologist vying with purportedly like
minds for the “neatest bit of sophistry in defense of going to law
school.” ...

You need to figure out if you’re one of the many potential law-school
applicants who ought to stay away for your own good. Nothing in my
paper (or anything else I've ever written) should be read as suggesting
that no matter who you are, things are going to be great for you if you
start law school in the next few years. Things will improve only if more
people avoid law school unless they are good bets to succeed. So
unless you have a coherent and plausible plan for the use you’re going
to make of your law degree that is rationally justified by your LSAT and
undergraduate grades, don’t go to law school. If the only law schools you get into are ones with an acceptance rate north of 50%, don’t go. If that makes me an idiot, I can live with it. When all is said and
done, though, I do have one thing to thank Elie for. As Oscar Wilde
memorably remarked, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. I thank Above the Law for subjecting me to the lesser of the two evils.